Thursday, March 18, 2010

Problem solving

Just finished watching "Die Hard With a Vengeance" (the one with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson), and noticed that the director did a piss-poor job of showing how McCain and Zeus got the 4 gallons of water into a 5 gallon jug when the only other container was a 3 gallon jug. So for the benefit of any math- or logic-impaired out there, here's how it works:
  1. Fill 3-gallon container.
  2. Empty 3-gallon into 5-gallon
  3. Refill 3-gallon
  4. Pour into 5-gallon until it's full.
  5. [3-g now contains 1 gallon: filled twice with 3 gallons (steps 1 and 3), emptied of 3 gallons once (step 2), then emptied of 2 gallons (step 4)]
  6. Empty 5-gallon.
  7. Pour rest of 3-gallon into 5-gallon.
  8. Fill 3-gallon, empty into 5-gallon
  9. [5-g now contains 4 gallons: 1 gallon (step 7) + 3 gallons (step 8)]
Simple, no?

Monday, March 15, 2010

inCENSUSed

Got my 2010 Census form in today's mail. Thankfully for all concerned, it was the short form. Still, there were a few troubling things that I dealt with appropriately:
  • They wanted my phone number: "We may call if we don't understand an answer". Tough shit; should've made the question clearer.
  • Last and first names. Pbbbbbbbbbbbt! Don't need this to count me.
  • My race. I'm not White (more of a pale tan), Black/African Am./Negro (um... aren't those all the same thing?), American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian Indian, Japanese, Native Hawaiian (last time I checked, even the original inhabitants were imported. No?), Chinese, Korean, Guamanian or Chamorro, Filipino, Vietnamese, Other Pacific Islander (to be specified), Other Asian (to be specified), or some other race. Screw it - I'm Human.
Other than space for an additional 11 people the might be in the household, that was it.

Oh, and here's something amusing: the FIRST question was the number of people in the place; question TWO was if there were any additional people not included in question one. WTF?

It's not pr0n, otherwise...